pennsylvaniavoter@comcast.net

412-558-0252 • 724-552-6972

DECEMBER 4, 2006

I am Marybeth Kuznik, residing at 6093 Pleasant Valley Road, Irwin PA. I serve as Executive Director of VotePA which is a statewide alliance of groups and individuals committed to voting rights and election integrity. My organization has many members in Allegheny County, and on their behalf I am speaking to you today.

If I jump in my car after leaving this meeting and take a chance on driving home without wearing a seatbelt, I may well reach my destination unscathed – this time. But should I continue traveling without this safety device on a regular basis, chances will dramatically increase that sooner or later I will be badly hurt or even killed in a serious accident.

The situation with our voting machines in Allegheny and surrounding counties is no different. The November 7 General Election had many serious problems locally and throughout our state -- clear warning signs that we are traveling without a safety belt, and sooner or later we are headed for a terrible wreck.

In my own native Westmoreland County, we use the same iVotronic voting machines that you have in Allegheny. On election day morning, it suddenly became apparent that every one of our 800-plus machines was misprogrammed with the wrong date for the election.

To the iVotronics it appeared that the election was already over, so the first thing in the morning they began asking pollworkers if they wanted to close the polls. Some Judges of Elections thought they needed to start over and tried clicking “close the polls”, only to learn that once a machine was closed it could not be restarted without a technician from the county resetting it. Dozens, if not hundreds of voters were turned away while waiting for technicians and emergency paper ballots to arrive.

Throughout the day, every single time a PEB was inserted to admit a Westmoreland County voter to a machine, some poor pollworker had to go through an extra step to keep that machine up and running. As a Judge of Elections myself, I personally went through this extra step nearly six hundred times on the three machines in my own precinct.

The screen interface for pollworkers on the iVotronic is more difficult to navigate than the screen presented to voters. Pollworkers had to be extremely careful not to hit “close the polls” in error, especially after doing this hundreds of times as the day wore on.

A VotePA member residing in the Mount Lebanon area reported this also happening in Allegheny County. Apparently the clock or software was wrong in his precinct, for when this gentleman went to vote, he noticed that the pollworker had to exit out of that “close the polls” screen. An hour of so later, his wife came in to vote and noted that one of the machines – the one that her husband had voted on – was now shut down.

Other problems happened throughout our state including in Allegheny County. iVotronics again failed to print the legally required zero tape in time for the opening of the polls in many areas. Voters expressed concern and lack of confidence that the electronic ballot boxes on these machines were perhaps not empty when the voting commenced. An even more serious problem was created when some of these machines refused to start up at all, or would not print out results at the end of the voting day.

ES&S iVotronics figured prominently in reports of “vote flipping” or swapping that was noted in numerous Pennsylvania counties (including Allegheny) according to reports of the Election Protection Coalition and in the Republican State Committee’s letter to Secretary of the Commonwealth Pedro Cortés. A message VotePA received last week from Department of State Chief Counsel Albert Masland said their office is still investigating all these reports.

In what is nationally the most serious problem of the 2006 election, 18,000 votes are missing from ES&S iVotronics in Sarasota County Florida in the closely contested 13^th Congressional District race there. 18,000 missing votes is a huge and serious failure. Imagine the national confusion that would result if this were to happen in 2008, with the US Presidency hanging on the outcome of this one race in one county.

And now imagine that the hanging county in 2008 is in Pennsylvania, not Florida. Electronic voting machine problems and failures can strike without warning or reason and indeed it very easily could be Allegheny in the spotlight next time instead of Sarasota. Imagine the national attention, the anger, the finger pointing that would be focused on you, gentlemen, because you have chosen to travel forward without the “safety belt” provided by a recountable, recoverable voter-verified paper ballot.

We have already had machines that fail to start up, machines that won’t print zero tapes or vote totals, machines that ask to be shut down hundreds of times during the voting day, and machines that are reported to swap votes. All of these are serious failures that should serve as a strong warning to Allegheny County and to all of Pennsylvania. With every passing election we are more and more likely to be headed for a wreck. We need to start using the safety belt provided by voter-verified paper ballots -- now before it is too late.

It’s up to you gentlemen; click it or ticket.

VotePA is a statewide alliance of groups and individuals dedicated to voting rights and election integrity with open, accessible, and accurately counted voting for every citizen.